Humminbird Unleashes On the Fly Digital Depth Charting – The hottest, newest, and just plain cool and odd from ICAST 2014

Incredible. With Humminbirds exclusive AccuChart Live system, anglers will be able to create surgically-detailed underwater contour maps, automatically, as they fish. Photo courtesy Humminbird.

By Mike Stevens

In what is sure to cause an immediate buzz at ICAST 2014, Humminbird is once again changing the face of the outdoor electronics space with an invaluable innovation. With Humminbird’s exclusive AccuChart Live system, anglers will be able to create surgically-detailed underwater contour maps, automatically, as they fish.

Let's think about this for a minute.

Say you take your kayak to a remote lake deep into the upper Siberian wilderness that maybe sees a soul or two a year. Obviously any kind of published underwater intel on the place isn't going to exist, but after a day paddling around with the AccuChart system engaged, you could very well end up with the only subsurface map of the place on the planet.

At this point you should be thinking about the off-the-beaten-path or low-pressure fisheries on your radar, and drooling.

"There's a lot of water in the world, and not all of it is mapped, or charted accurately," says Humminbird Brand Manager, Jeff Kolodzinski. "AutoChart LIVE is the only tool that lets you create your own 100-percent accurate digital contour maps. It works instantly, too, so you literally watch the contour lines populate the screen while you fish or drive the boat."

Kolodzinski adds: "No extra processing of the data on a PC or sending an SD card to a third party is required. So if I'm on vacation in Canada, I can map a remote lake right away, and take advantage of my findings. I might be the only angler on earth who has this map, and I can choose to keep my data totally private. Or, when I return home, I can even share my map with a buddy, or trade my lake for his secret lake map. Incredible."

Offered as a free software upgrade exclusively for users of Humminbird's powerful ONIX and ION Cross Touch touchscreen units, AutoChart LIVE provides 8 full hours of mapping data. After 8 hours of data have been compiled, users can either erase the data and commence mapping, or purchase a Zero Line Map Card (MSRP $99).

"All anglers know that 80-percent of the fish are found in 20-percent of the water," says Kolodzinski. "The best way to identify that key 20-percent of the lake is to make use of a good chart. And AutoChart LIVE leaves no hotspot uncharted."

Say you take your boat to a remote lake deep into the upper Siberian wilderness that maybe sees a soul or two a year. With AccuChart, you could very well end up with the only subsurface map of the place on the planet.